Why was Portballintrae excluded?
02 May 2006
DUP MEP Jim Allister has expressed surprise that the popular North Coast beach at Portballintrae was excluded from the Northern Ireland Bathing Water survey conducted by the DOE in preparation for implementation of the revised Bathing Water Directive.
The Directive, originally adopted in 1975 and implemented in Northern Ireland in 1993 and recently amended, requires each EU Member State to identify its most popular bathing waters for regular testing. Sixteen such sites were formally identified in Northern Ireland in 1993 and in 2004/05 they, and a further eleven sites, were monitored as candidate sites under the revised Directive. In a recently published review, the DOE has suggested that 22 beaches be included as those required to meet EU Bathing standards.
Mr Allister is raising with DOE Minister Lord Rooker why Portballintrae was excluded from both the survey and the final list, considering that beaches like Groomsport, Cranfield Bay and Ballycastle, all with less than 100 daily users, are included.
Mr Allister, who has been actively campaigning for effective sewerage treatment facilities for Portballintrae said:-
"I trust the exclusion of Portballintrae is not connected with the failure to date to provide the village with adequate sewerage disposal facilities. Portballintrae ought to have been connected to the new North Coast Treatment Works but instead the DOE intends to involve it in an upgrade in the Treatment Works at Bushmills. Now, as feared by local residents, there are signs of delay and slippage in making adequate provision at Bushmills. I hope the exclusion of Portballintrae from the Bathing Water survey is not a device to avoid consequences under the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive. Clearly, if it were found that Portballintrae was a beach of sufficient popularity to warrant designation under the Bathing Water Directive, then delay in providing an adequate sewerage infrastructure would accentuate the offence under the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive."
